Grief too controversial to name

Wrote Waleed Shadid in an article about Zohran Mamdani’s Mayoral nomination win in New Your City.

Listening to voters whose grief is too controversial to name. The daily slaughter of Palestinians. Live streamed. 

But too controversial to speak about in America, the UK, Australia, Canada and Europe. 

Zohran spoke about this slaughter. He did so with a Jewish man, also running for Mayor, beside him, equally broken by the slaughter. A Muslin and a Jew. Standing beside each other. Supportive. Compassionate. Human. It really is not that hard to do when we remember our humanity.

We live in a time of sanitised politics. Do not offend Goliath. Do not stand for anything controversial. Stay safe, plain and centrist.

Except it doesn’t work anymore. The bank accounts are empty, the rents are too high, and the bloated elite bloat exponentially more every day. A sign in a Plaza in Venice says that if Bezos can afford to buy a city, he can afford to pay his taxes. But today taxes are only for the poor and middle class. 

Even the grief of endless precarity is too controversial to name, as the political class do the bidding of their sponsors, extracting more from our precious oceans, throwing protected forests open to decimation, taking the work of writers and artists as if the work means nothing except the opportunity for more wealth creation for the exploiters.

The tide has turned. The illusion is blown. The Emperor has no clothes. 

Cruelty has a use-by date. 

When the images of genocide, starvation, or people being taken off the streets by masked thugs smother us in grief, controversy be damned. 

It must be named for what it is. 

Photo June 17th 2025, Article written June 27th 2025